Toroidal standing waves excited by a storm sudden commencement: DE 1 observations

Abstract

A 74‐nT sudden commencement on July 13, 1982, was observed in the magnetosphere with instruments on the Dynamics Explorer 1 satellite. Inbound, near L = 4.5, the satellite was located at 1524 magnetic local time and 20° magnetic latitude. The sudden commencement established a strong, east–west oscillation, with 100‐s period, which was observed in the magnetic field, the electric field, and the plasma flow velocity records. There was also a compressional component of this 100‐s oscillation and a rapidly damped 300‐s compressional pulsation. The compressional oscillations may be evidence of cavity resonances, excited by the sudden commencement. The cavity waves may, in turn, couple to toroidal waves in field line resonance at the satellite location. In addition the sudden commencement caused the onset of waves with frequencies from 0.1 up to at least 0.5 Hz. The observations are compared with similar reports from earlier pulsations related to sudden commencements.